Flowers Foods, Inc. (NYSE:FLO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 10, 2023 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

J.T. Rieck - Executive Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations

Ryals McMullian - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Steve Kinsey - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Bill Chappell - Truist Securities

Stephen Powers - Deutsche Bank

Mitchell Pinheiro - Sturtevant & Company

Connor Rattigan - Consumer Edge

Jim Salera - Stephens

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Flowers Foods Third Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. Please be advised that today's event is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, J.T. Rieck, Executive Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

J.T. Rieck

Thank you, Liz, and good morning. I hope everyone had the opportunity to review our earnings release, listen to our prepared remarks, and view the slide presentation that were all posted yesterday evening on our Investor Relations website. After today's call. I'm sorry -- After today's Q&A session, we will also post an audio replay of this call.

Please note that in this Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements about the company's performance. Although we believe these statements to be reasonable, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. In addition to what you hear in these remarks, important factors relating to Flowers Foods business are fully detailed in our SEC filings. We also provide non-GAAP financial measures for which disclosure and reconciliations are provided in the earnings release and at the end of the slide presentation on our website.

Joining me today are Ryals McMullian, Chairman, CEO and President; and Steve Kinsey, our CFO.

Ryals, I'll turn it over to you.

Ryals McMullian

All right, great. Thanks, J.T. Good morning everybody. Appreciate you joining our third quarter call. We're very pleased with our strong third quarter results. We generated record quarterly revenues and maintained our unit share despite inflationary pressures. Sales benefited from strategic pricing initiatives that are designed to mitigate inflation and improve volume trends. Our leading brands continue to perform well and we're investing in innovation and marketing to maintain that momentum. We also continue to make progress in our digital and cost savings initiatives, which are helping to improve our efficiencies.

Despite the strong results, revenues did come in a little bit less than expected due to business rationalizations that materialized sooner than we expected and a lower-than-normal amount of storm activity. It's important to note that although the timing can be unpredictable, these business exits are an integral part of our portfolio strategy as we aim to improve the profitability of our food service business. We've made great progress in that regard and we expect continued improvement moving forward. I remain extremely confident in our prospects and I've never been more confident in our ability to grow shareholder value over time.